[Windows] Compress and decompress files with Haozip

Locutus September 17, 2012 5

There are thousands of compression tools available all across the internet. Many, like 7-Zip and WinZip, are incredibly popular for no particular reason. What makes 7-Zip better than PeaZip? What makes WinZip better than ALZip? Haozip is another one of those free compression tools, and like 7-Zip, is free and supports as many formats as could be.

Based on appearances and features, Haozip is the Chinese copy of 7-zip. It does actually have features other than those that come from 7-zip! Instead of simply extracting disc images, for example, you can mount them as though they are fully separate drives, much like Virtual CloneDrive.

Haozip is a nice compression tool, and since it’s based on 7-Zip, it has all the features, plus all the speed, you’d ever need. It’s also much nicer looking than 7-Zip due to its skin changer and new default theme.

Price: Free!

Version discovered: v3.0

Supported OS: Windows unknown

Download size: 3.9MB

VirusTotal malware scan results: 1/42

Portability: Requires installation

Haozip homepage

[via Raymond.cc]

TAGS » Haozip, Windows, Windows Software, Windows software of the day

POSTED IN » Windows

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About the author: Locutus View all posts by Locutus

Who is the mysterious Locutus? No one knows, but there is an ancient tale that once his true identity is revealed, something big will happen. What? Who knows. The name Locutus is based off of the Star Trek: The Next Generation character Jean-Luc Picard.

5 Comments »

Eric September 17, 2012 at 5:32 AM (comment permalink) -

At Locutus, well then what makes your wife any better than any other woman? That is if the mysterious Locutus even has a wife. Just kidding but we all have particular things we like and dislike and they all have somewhat different features and layouts. For example, peazip probably has the widest format support and best encryption options but I never liked the interface.
I actually just switched my default archiver to Haozip from 7-zip. I like its layout that is similar to 7-zip and like its customizable right click context menu items including yet another md5 checksum tool. My main reasons for switching to Haozip is that it supports thumbnail image views, has a preview panel to display images, and has a fantastic internal image viewer that allows easy navigation through all the images and not just one at a time.
The image viewer is actually very good overall and can be made the default image viewer for windows. It is actually one of my favorites.
Only thing I would like to see in Haozip is read write support for Freearc’s arc format, which is exceptionally fast in certain situations. As far as I know only Freearc and Peazip support this format though. Does anybody know of another program that supports it as I am not a huge fan of those two programs?
Another interesting archive manager is Simplyzip. What makes it unique is that it allows you to view all the images in an archive with your default image viewer with full next image and previous image support. It does this by extracting to a temp directory but cleans up nicely when closed. It is also portable
Locutus is on quite a roll with certain software cats lately. If only he could find an md5 tool that uploads to imgur or whatever. LOL

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Tom September 17, 2012 at 5:49 AM (comment permalink) -

FWIW, Malwarebytes Antimalware doesn’t like the Haozip download button’s link. Be aware.

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mukhi September 17, 2012 at 6:16 AM (comment permalink) -

@Tom: if MBAM does not like it, i would not like it either. also, does it compress in RAR? if not, i would stick to 7-zip.

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Eric September 17, 2012 at 8:30 AM (comment permalink) -

@Tom: @mukhi:
But the actual downloaded executable checks out as clean with malwarebytes and you guys did see the virustotal results right? It can open RAR but not compress to it. I was not aware that 7-zip could do that either, and even if it did you would need to have gotten the RAR.exe from winRAR or somewhere. That might work in HaoZip but I don’t see an obvious option for it.

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John September 18, 2012 at 7:22 AM (comment permalink) -

It’s OK. I rather use it like a portable app

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